Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Enriching the public discourse? The lost art of fact checking at NOW newspapers

Apparently, in addition to sponsoring blog space for the black helicopter crowd, Community Newspapers has evidently extended their laissez-faire policy to assertions of fact made in print at Community Newspaper Inc.'s "MyCommunityNOW" papers.

Witness the "Community Voices" feature in the June 25 edition of the Franklin/Greendale/Hales Corners/Oak Creek NOW Newspaper, "Love or hate 'em, plenty of views on roundabouts."

From "Linda G" of Philadelphia:

I spent 25 adult years in the Franklin area before moving out east and find this talk of roundabouts a bit strange. People in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are getting RID of them. Folks here hate them. Accidents abound. Granted, most accidents are minor. Ten years from now, I bet people will regret having built these things.

Editing? Well, the underlined material above was actually edited out of the print version of this comment (the online posting is here,) Another (wiser) edit was the rambling "A tour guide in Halifax, during one of our visits, said of a roundabout we were navigating that it was going to be replaced because at least two or three accidents happen every day. Sure enough, one happened right there in front of us. Semi-truck crunched a van.")

Fact checking? Opinions are one thing, but, as a newspaper, when you print an assertion of fact, it's generally a good idea to go to Google or make a phone call. Had anyone at Community Newspapers done so, they would have learned that in the older cities of the eastern United States - particularly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey - traffic circles were and are common traffic features.

Let's make this clear (as Community Newspapers missed a teachable moment): Just as not all roundabouts are correctly engineered or appropriate for certain locations, Traffic circles are very different - and much less safe and efficient than - roundabouts. In fact, any traffic circle - often erroneously referred to as a "roundabout" - built in the U.S. prior to 1994 is almost certainly not a conforming roundabout.

And, guess what? The old traffic circles in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, etc. - some dating back to horse and buggy days - are indeed being removed. And often replaced by roundabouts when appropriate.

Does Community Newspapers enrich public discussion when they take this lazy approach?

I guess it falls to me to do what they don't have time for.

From Traffic Circles vs. Roundabouts:

The New Shape of Office Space | Planetizen

The New Shape of Office Space | Planetizen.

"Coworking is rapidly emerging as a meme for the reorganization of knowledge work among entrepreneurs, programmers, writers and even, as we learned during our visits, sustainable furniture designers. The majority of discussions of the social implications of the Internet on the evolution of work and cities revolve around concepts such as the virtual office, online collaboration, and telecommuting. But, coworking communities (and related phenomenon that have grown out of the culture of the open source movement such as MeetUps and BarCamps) illustrate the ways in which these emergent forms of organizing are deeply embedded in physical places and, at the same time, enabled by new technologies such as laptops and wireless networks.

As the material artifacts of offices – messages, documents, photos and plans - are digitized and stored on servers, physical spaces have the potential to become increasingly open, flexible and sharable. Data security concerns aside, one can imagine a future scenario when most of the tools that we need to work effectively will be accessed and stored in “the cloud”. This allows the dynamic reorganization and co-location of people, firms and activities that have been separated since the early days of industrialization, the advent of the hierarchical firm and the rise of cities themselves. For example, an office building might house a conference room that doubles as an entertainment room for the co-located apartments. Such arrangements will require new ways of thinking about private and semi-private spaces, trust and security, and ownership and property."

Northwestern Mutual CEO puts Franklin on notice regarding RTA: Get with the program

Did my colleagues on the Franklin Economic Development Commission read the Letters to the Editor in today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel?

I speak of:

1. Commissioners who thought ridiculous my assertion that Franklin should begin to plan in earnest for the rail line that will eventually run through neighboring Oak Creek (that is: Reassure the business community that Franklin understands the importance of commuter rail and will provide and plan for the vital "last mile connection"), and;
2. Commissioners who regularly insert anti-transit materials into the EDC meeting packets (the last of which was an opinion column by George Torres, at the time an employee of county exec Scott Walker and head of Milwaukee County's shambolic transit system);

My fellow EDC Commissioners should now know that Franklin corporate citizen Northwestern Mutual is led by a man who gets it - - and will expect us to get it as well.

RTA should be sales tax-funded

I am writing to express my support for the creation of a three-county Regional Transit Authority and a viable, dedicated funding source for transit and Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail. As CEO of a major business in Milwaukee County, I know dedicated funding for transit is critical to the future success of my business.

The local business community in Milwaukee is solidly behind the current RTA's recommendations to shift funding for transit to a dedicated sales tax. Many opponents of this transit proposal argue that shifting transit from the property tax to a sales tax is anti-business or will drive business away. That is categorically untrue.

Northwestern Mutual has two major offices in Milwaukee County and employs a significant number of residents of Wauwatosa. Our current transit system is so inadequate and obsolete that my employees cannot get from our downtown office to our Franklin location on the Milwaukee County Transit System. The lack of available transit in this region has a much greater impact on my company than a shift in how we pay for transit.

Of the top 50 most populated U.S. cities or regions, only seven do not have or are not developing rail transit. Wisconsin is already behind other regions in this regard, and without a stable bus transit system - much less improved transit and commuter rail links connecting Milwaukee to other regions - southeastern Wisconsin will be left behind as the state's talent pool is attracted to other developing regions. Those remaining in Wisconsin cannot get to their jobs.

Please tell state legislators that a vote for a fully funded, three-county RTA is a vote to support business in southeastern Wisconsin.

Edward Zore
CEO, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co.
Milwaukee

Beware the cul-de-sac nightmare....

Saving the suburbs: Interview with the authors of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs

Architects Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson explain how existing suburbs can be redesigned and redeveloped in their book RETROFITTING SUBURBIA.

See a street become sane and safe right before your eyes

This is just a great look at how streets CAN be once we start changing bad habits. Be sure to click the interactive graphic here (photo above is a screenshot).

It’s easy to forget that our streets are alterable. They weren’t set down by God on the eighth day; they were designed by human beings. Unfortunately, throughout the 20th century, most of the human beings designing our streets were traffic engineers. For the most part, they viewed the city from behind a windshield and saw the street as a problem to be solved for automobiles. The result is the American city that most of us know today: sprawling, traffic-choked, hostile to pedestrians and cyclists, dependent on a vast, never-ending flow of cheap oil, and deeply unsustainable.

(Via GOOD Magazine)

UPDATED: "The tone of the initial post sets the stage for what is to follow. We get what we give."

Saw this comment on a "MyCommunityNOW" blog and thought it was so well-stated that it needs to be posted here as well. With slight edits for context and my added emphasis, this good advice is by the commenter known as "JUST1THOUGHT":

The post says: "It is appropriate and quite helpful if the individual and/or group that is distributing the literature provide full disclosure on the pamphlets, brochures, etc. with contact information including name, address, telephone number, e-mail address."

I sort of agree with him about the literature distribution. I’d like to know who is saying what too. But when it comes to blogging on a regular basis (3-5 times a day) those rules don’t seem to necessarily apply.  But why not and what if they did?  Scary thought isn’t it?

Most blogger bios are blank or vague at best. Some are down right silly. Yet they complain about anonymous commenters as evil.  Again, I sort of agree, people are mean, but they are responding to something you "distributed".

Just imagine if we had to provide our “contact information including name, address, telephone number, e-mail address" on a blog or a comment for that matter. The literature distributed, and the comments they receive would be more objective and less subjective (and less in general) Or we all would have broken windows and flat tires.

To prove the point, view your blog with the highest comments in the last few weeks and look at the subject. Then read the comments.  Good begets good and bad begets bad.

Now it might be said, (has been said), if you don’t like it, don’t read it. But I have to read it to come to a conclusion. You are posting on a Community Web Page as a “community voice”. Comments are invited by nature of the ability to comment. But the blogger is in full control. You don’t have to pass through a comment you find offensive either. But sometimes you do, just to counter attack. A real dialog never develops. I guess that’ why there are so few comments these days. Unless it’s good news.

Don’t mistake a high hit count for popularity, curiosity counts too. People love to hate. Good or bad, the numbers of comments you receive to a post are the true gauge of the effectiveness of your blog. Since you have control of what gets through, you control how effective the conversation can get.  The tone of the initial post sets the stage for what is to follow. We get what we give.

Bloggers (especially NOW bloggers) - I am not suggesting that you provide full disclosure on your bio, I sure won’t, but try blogging as if you did. Try and imagine yourself entering my neighborhood and placing you literature in my “newspaper box or at my front door.” As long as you are on the Now website, it’s sort of the same thing, 21st century style. I go to the NOW for a lot of reasons and there you are.

BUT MOST OF ALL, IT IS NOT WHAT YOU SAY AS MUCH AS THE WAY YOU SAY IT.

End of Post.

UPDATE: As if to underscore and add an exclamation point to "JUST1THOUGHT's" excellent observations and articulation thereof, the blogger in question "responded" to this well thought-out comment thusly:

Now if only the hateful left would read and heed.
We get what we give, hey? You have no idea what I all get...

Name-calling, non-engagement and self-pity, all in the space of 24 words. At least in this case his approach to mediocrity is somewhat parsimonious.

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Albert Einstein

Truth.

Weekend Viewing: James Howard Kunstler dissects suburbia | Video on TED.com

Few say it better.

James Howard Kunstler dissects suburbia | Video on TED.com.

Meditations on "Infrastructure"

As local municipalities like Franklin rush to add lanes and asphalt with stimulus money rather than secure the crumbling infrastructure - i.e. take care of what we already have, it's worth a note about what "infrastructure" really is:

Spotlight Vol. 8, No. 4: What Lies Beneath: Meditations on a Word - Regional Plan Association:

I like the sentiments, once decoded. What I like to say is that infrastructure is "the things we do in common." That is, it is those tasks or function that we have opted to do collectively and cooperatively, rather than individually and competitively.

I find something moving in that. I think we progress as a society by defining infrastructure upward, by including more and more things in its rhetorical embrace.

Before the late 19th century, clean, safe water was a private good, to be obtained individually on the market. Then we built public water systems, and water became "infrastructure." Now, we debate whether we should have a national health care system. If we answer yes, then health care will become "infrastructure."

Before infrastructure made its appearance, a much handier and to me, more honest term was used: public works. Robert Moses, the famous and infamous czar of New York state infrastructure for a half century, titled his autobiography "Public Works: A Dangerous Trade."